


Noceur

by risotto



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bickering, Canon Divergent, Gen, High ☆ Speed!, Pillow Fights, Silly, Sleeping Together, Sleepovers, Sleepy Boys, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5515859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risotto/pseuds/risotto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Haru can't sleep because it's cold and Makoto can't find a good spot, Ikuya wears a sleeping pack, and Asahi is Asahi. Silly fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noceur

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I loved High Speed Starting Days enough to see it twice and because of the Golden Girls. But mostly because of the Golden Girls.
> 
> A note: there are no High Speed Starting Days spoilers here. This is more or less a Canon AU where Ikuya and Asahi are still in a swim team with Haru and Makoto well into their high school years. This is also silly. Very silly.

It’s a little before midnight when Haru gets a visitor in his bed.

He’s not sound asleep but he’s not truly awake either, and in that strange haze in between, he can make out a few details about said visitor—none of which are very identifying, but they’re still telling.

The oversized bed creaks with added weight, which means his visitor is of significant build and weight. A rush of cold air seeps into it when the sheets lift, lasting until a moment later when sizable body heat is flushed up against Haru’s back. It’s just what Haru wants and needs.

“Sousuke,” he groans into his pillow, his eyes still closed, “if you want to fool around, take off your shirt.”

“Hah?”

That’s…not Sousuke’s voice. Not even close to it.

“Haru, it’s me, Makoto.”

A long and awkward pause follows, during which Haru opens his bleary eyes, wide and paranoid, and regards his immediate surroundings. His memory comes rushing back, and when he realizes they’re in the rental-house Natsuya got for them, Haru huffs with disappointment and turns onto his side, away from Makoto’s stare. “Ah,” he says, like an afterthought.

“The heat went out again,” Makoto explains without being prompted, “and you’re the only one with an electric blanket. I hope you don’t mind.”

Haru doesn’t mind, not exactly. In the seventeen years they’ve known each other, they’ve slept together more than most married couples—this isn’t far from the norm with them. Still, he was having a wonderful dream, and now it’s lost forever.

Haru’s disapproval is lost on Makoto who’s chortling softly, all sunshine and rainbows about the whole thing, unaware that he’s ruined the best sleep Haru’s had in months. “Ah, this reminds me of the sleepovers we had when we were kids, when I’d get too scared of the dark and latch onto your shirt.”

Haruka grunts. “What are you talking about? You’re _still_ scared of the dark.”

“Haru~!”

“Go to bed, Makoto,” he sighs.

 

 

 --

 

 

The soft padding of bare feet just outside the room draws their attention not long after they’ve settled in. Whoever it is stops just before the door for a moment, then continues pacing back and forth before stopping again, only to repeat the process once more. This goes on for about another minute, until Haru decides he’s had enough. “You can come in, you know.”

And with that, the door opens and in walks Ikuya, draped in a thin bedsheet and shivering like a leaf. His hair is pulled back away from his face with a colorful and bowed terrycloth headband, fully revealing his shy, averted gaze. “Can I,” he starts, voice barely above a mutter, growing louder only when it seems like nothing else will work, “um—is it…” A sigh. “Look, I don’t have an electric blanket and it’s so cold in my bed. Can I join you?”

“Um,” Makoto fidgets, no doubt uncomfortable with the idea of making choices for someone else when he’s in their bed, and waits for Haru to say something.

Under normal circumstances and in a more moderate temperature, Haru might object to the extra body in the bed with him. He’s not a fussy sleeper by any means but he does like having his space and his peace and quiet. But as it stands, he’s not cruel, and it’s entirely too late and too cold to weigh any other options. So, he rolls onto his side and mumbles, “do whatever you like.”

Ikuya takes this as an affirmative and hurries into the bed, casually squeezing himself into a cozy spot right in between Makoto and Haru with complete disregard for the current status quo. He curls up against Haru’s back, an armed draped over him, effectively establishing himself as the big spoon despite being several centimeters smaller.

A short while later, Makoto moves, his head snapping towards the door. “Did you guys hear something?”

“Yes,” Haru drones into his pillow, “and as long as it’s my bed, I can do whatever I want.”

Ikuya inches back away from Haru as Makoto does the same. “N-No,” Makoto says, “I mean, it sounds like the heater might be kicking back on.”

Indeed, there’s a faint whir of HVAC activity in the air. It’s music to Haru’s ears. Maybe now he can get some peaceful sleep and return to his dreams.

The room door swings open yet again and there stands one Asahi Shiina, his arms crossed over himself to preserve any of his remaining body heat, a monkey wrench in one of his hands. “You guys,” he says in his usual voice, which means it’s much too loud for any moment of the day, let alone now, “I’ve been tinkering with the heater to get it back on. And I think it’s finally working.”

“Really?” Makoto squeals, delighted. “Ah, Asahi, you’re a genius!”

“Now that’s something you don’t hear every day,” Ikuya drawls.

Asahi looks embarrassed, instead of like he’s tickled pink. “We~ll,” he begins, timidly, “the thing is: I, um, also turned on the air-con along with the heater, at full blast, and I can’t turn it off.”

So much for him being a genius, Haru groans in his thoughts.

“Way to go, dummy,” Ikuya snaps, “now it’s going to get colder in here than it is out there!”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me! At least I was trying to help instead of getting dolled up unlike _some_ people I know,” Asahi sputters.

“Come on you two,” Makoto peacefully intervenes. “We’ll just call a repairman and have him take a look at it in the morning. For now, let’s just all go to sleep, okay?”

Twiddling his fingers, Asahi shuffles from the door over to the far side of the bed where Makoto is. “So, since you guys have some heat, can I—”

“ _No_ ,” Haru and Ikuya interject.

“Aww, c’mon!” Asahi cries, his teeth chattering. “It’s freezing! You guys don’t want me to get pneumonia and _die_ , do you?”

While Haru’s pretty sure that’s a gross exaggeration on things and doesn’t care one way or another if Asahi sleeps with them or not, Ikuya, on the other hand, appears to seriously consider it.

“Do you?” a panicked Asahi prompts them again.

With a disapproving frown, Makoto, nudges Ikuya. “Be nice.” He turns to Asahi and lifts up the corner of the blanket, “Of course you can join us, Asahi.”

“Thank you, thank you, _thank you_!” With barely-contained glee, Asahi bellyflops onto the bed, rolling over Makoto’s body and poking him with his limbs in the process. He almost climbs over Ikuya’s body in similar fashion, but a well-placed elbow to his solar plexus stops him where he is and he’s forced to retreat and take Makoto’s spot on the edge instead.

Barely ten minutes pass before their easy silence is shattered once again, this time by Makoto’s large body shifting and squirming around. “Something’s pricking my ankle,” he whines after yet another unsuccessful attempt at finding a more comfortable position to sleep in.

A gruff sound--a chuckle, perhaps--escapes Ikuya, perhaps louder than intended judging from the way he burrows further into the blankets. “I bet stupid Asahi didn’t cut his toenails again.”

Asahi bolts up, his face about as red as his hair. Out of anger or embarrassment, who can say. “Shut up, Ikuya! They’re perfectly trimmed!”

“Whatever you say, _Wolverine_.”

Growling, Asahi reaches for a pillow but, luckily, Makoto has enough foresight to snatch it away from him before things could take a turn for the worse and before they end up putting dents in the wall. That does little to deter their cumulative anger, and soon, a shouting match erupts between them, with Makoto trying to smooth things over to no avail. Threats that Natsuya and Nao will come down on them with the hammer of Thor don’t even work.

Meanwhile, Haru stuffs a pillow over his head to drown out the escalating noise, thinking maybe he should have just let them all freeze to death.

 

 

\--

 

 

Haru doesn’t blink his eyes open—he doesn’t need to. It’s still dark and still cold, and they’re all still sleeping in the same bed, in one piece. Somehow. “Ikuya.”

“Mm?”

“Are you crying?”

“What? N-No!”

“There’s something wet on my back.”

“Hyaluronic acid,” Ikuya mumbles. “From my sleeping pack. Keeps my face moisturized and glowy and soft…”

Haru makes a face. “…and it’s seeping through my shirt.”

From way over on the other side of the bed, Asahi cackles, remarking, “like being with a bed-wetter.”

To Haru’s chagrin, and no one’s surprise, Ikuya takes the obvious bait. “Shut up, Asahi.”

Makoto groans, tosses and turns, then turns some more, his heavy frame changing the bed’s center of gravity.

Haru sighs, exasperated. _Great_. Now they’re never going to sleep.

“ _Oi_ , Makoto. Is Ikuya’s face pack leaking onto you too?” Asahi teases.

Something’s blindly launched Asahi’s way from Haru and Ikuya’s side of the bed. It takes Haru a moment to realize it’s a pillowcase. The one for _his_ pillow.

Ikuya’s scowl deepens when he sees he’s missed his target and when said target taunts him with a raspberry. “I said shut up, stupid Asahi!”

“Hey Ikuya,” Asahi says, wrinkling his nose, “where did you buy that stuff anyway? From the girls’ section of the store? It smells like flowers.”

“I don’t know, Asahi,” Ikuya sneers, voice unusually calm for him to be in the middle of a verbal spar, “it’s from wherever you bought your hair gel.”

Haru’s got to admit: that’s a good one. Against his better judgment, he snorts back an unexpected laugh.

That seems to cut Asahi the deepest, and no amount of lip-pursing or preparation could ever hope to save their poor eardrums when he all but screams: “Hey!! Don’t even--! I know what you’re getting at! Just wait till your precious _aniki_ finds out about the secret Valentine’s chocolate from last year!”

Ikuya’s eyes go wide and wild. An amazing sight to behold, because without his headband on, he’s got a _lot_ of hair in the way. “You wouldn’t…”

“I will!”

That’s it. They’re either going to turn on each other and kill themselves or come dawn, Natsuya will enter the room and euthanize them all. Haru massages his temples and opens his mouth to say something--anything--to keep them all quiet and alive.

Luckily, Makoto beats him to the punch so he doesn’t have to. “Asahi, stop teasing Ikuya! Ikuya, stop encouraging Asahi!”

Asahi relents and backs off, slumping back down onto the bed.

Ikuya, on the other hand, doesn’t and throws his pillow at Asahi with all his might, nailing him directly in the center of his face.

“Ow! Why you--!”

So much for sleep.

 

\--

 

Morning is almost gone by the time Natsuya gets fed up with waiting for four certain swimmers to muster up for their training. He’s not furious and can’t blame them for wanting to stay in than go out on a day like this. But cold snap or not, he’s certainly not going to make today’s training any easier for them just because, either.

“Hey,” his voice booms with authority as he slides the room door open and damn near off its hinges. “Get your butts in gear and--”

They’re all gathered in Haru’s room, just as Natsuya expected. Only they’re not lazing about or shirking their responsibilities like he thought.

They’re sprawled out over each other and spooning, a tangled web of toned limbs, uncombed hair, and mixed-up blankets. All of them are snoring, save for Haruka. To say that they’re _just_ sleeping would be the understatement of the year. Asahi is at one side of the bed, his body perpendicular to the other three, his head hanging off the edge of the bed. Next to him, Makoto’s body is twisted into some yoga pose that can’t be too comfortable for someone of his size (or any size, really) but the serene look on his face suggests otherwise. Ikuya’s to his right, his face unusually dewy, curled into a ball. At the end is Haruka, on his side, normal as can be, save for the way he’s latched onto a body pillow like it’s a person. A much larger person...

Quietly, Natsuya shuts the door and turns to leave, almost bumping noses with Nao in the process.

“Oh, you startled me.” Nao simpers, tucking pale hair behind his ear. “Is everything okay? Are they ready to go?”

“Everything’s fine,” Natsuya says, making sure to keep his voice soft and below the usual volume he uses out at poolside. As he moves away from the door, his steps become softer.

Nao follows after him, confused. “But aren’t we going to the community pool?”

“Nah, we can go much later,” muses Natsuya. “The kids are alright.”

A small grin quirks up Nao’s mouth. “Are _you_ alright?”

Natsuya waves a hand dismissively. “Yeah, listen,” he stops and peers back at the door, his brow furrowed. “What the hell is that stuff on Ikuya’s face?”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Noceur:** One who sleeps late or not at all; or, one who stays out late to revel or party.


End file.
